Business Creativity
Creativity, innovation and change: the link (creativity fuels change fuels creativity…)
= Using creativity to meet challenges, to find better solutions and to come up with new and useful
ideas that benefit the organization and its stakeholders
Creative organization = an organization that fosters, stimulates and embeds business creativity as an
engine for change and innovation.
Ben Duffy: de eerste person die als eerste heeft bedacht om te gaan kijken naar de noden van de
klant
Metacognition: Thinking about thinking, Assessing: yourself, others, the situation, the (creative)
process.
Introduction
Types of challenges
Approach to the problem
Reactive Proactive
Heuristic Predicament Opportunities
= hands-on, discovering, = a difficult, Ex: self-driving cars
interactive, learn by unpleasant or
experience embarrassing
Nature of the situation
problem Ex: standing in line
Algorithmic Formulaic Maintenance
= produced in Ex: computers
accordance with a
mechanically followed
rule
Ex: A mountain of tires
Foursight Thinking profile
Clarifier Ideator
• Asks a lot of questions • Full of dreams, original ideas
• Look for data, research and proof • Likes variety, change, new things
• Wants to be sure to be working on the • Visionary, thinks outside the box
right problem • Can be too abstract, overlook details
• Is cautious • Gets excited about many ideas but gets
• Might suffer from analysis paralysis bored easily
Developer Implementor
• Likes making things perfect • Loves to be in motion
• Not afraid of complexity and hard work • Happiest with the task to complete
• Great at planning • Willing to risk and improvise
• Patient and exact • Likes learning while trying
• Not good at improvising, gets lost • Confident, not afraid of obstacles
without a plan • Sometimes reckless, takes action
before thinking
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,The trouble with creativity
Creativity and mental illness
The brain is a tri-une brain: 3 areas in the brain:
- cortex: thinking
- Limbic: emotions
- Brain stem: survival = gator brain: tends to shut down thinking, trying for change not to occur
Gator brain thinking: hears newness and watch for the dangers of the newness.
Upshifting
The link between creativity and innovation
Creativity is getting the idea and innovation is doing something about it.
Creativity is required for innovation. Words mean something.
4P-model (Mell Rhodes)
Creativiteit is ambigu omdat het verschillende dimensies heeft.
Creativity = phenomenon in which a person communicates a new concept.
Mental activity is implicit in the definition. How new must the concept be? Who must it be new to?
Element Characteristics
Person Open to new ideas
Tolerant of complexity and ambiguity
Willing to take risks and learn from failure
Has many ideas
Defers judgement
Combines ideas
Process Combines creative (divergent) and critical (convergent- thinking (CPS
model)
Press (environment) Encourages and is supportive of creative ideas
Product Novel (original, unique) and useful (effective, someone cares)
History of creativity studies
JP Guilford: study of psychometry and intelligence, IQ tests don’t measure creativity, convergent and
divergent thinking.
W. Edwards Deming: “Without data you’re just another person with an opinion”
Alex Osborn: pioneer of creative thinking, brainstorming, CEF, CPSI
Sidney Parnes: teaching about education, CEF, CPSI, Osborn-Parnes model for CPS
Ruth Noller
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,Teresa M. Amabile: KEYS
Gerard J. Puccio: originator of FourSight theory
Creative Problem Solving (Osborn-Parnes)
= multiple step process that organizes a set of problems
1. Objective finding: I wish step (Divergent and convergent)
2. Fact finding: exhaustive information about the problem
3. Problem finding: generate many problem statements
4. Idea finding: divergent (brainstorming, quantity), convergent (best ideas are selected)
5. solution finding
6. Acceptance finding: possible sources of assistance and resistance
Threshold hypothesis (Torrance)
E. Paul Torrance: TTCT
Creative climate
A bad system will beat a good person every time.
Business and the art of war
The army is dependent on strategic leadership, but like most institutions, distrusts creativity.
Scientific research into creativity indicates that seeing creativity as artistic inspiration outside the
realm of science is a myth. Although creativity cannot be delivered on demand or even predicted
with accuracy, it is subject to explanation and understanding scientific methods.
Culture
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, Balanced ScoreCard
A Balanced Scorecard is not just a scorecard. When designed properly it can provide an excellent
management tool to help keep businesses and organisations on track. It is interesting to note that
‘scorecard’ is actually a bit of a misnomer. It is a hang-over from the early Kaplan and Norton days
when the balanced scorecard was first introduced. To be truly effective, a balanced scorecard will
concentrate on objectives rather than ‘scores’. The scores are important, but only in the context of
understanding what a business or organisation wants to achieve, rather than how to measure things
that may or may not matter.
The creative organisation
should/could it be built bottom-up or top-down?
Bottom-up approach to increase organizational innovativeness by motivating employees at all levels
and duties has been largely overlooked. Also, the linkages between employees’ daily information
seeking and sharing, and their creativity and innovation are necessary to understand.
Employees’ formal and informal information behaviours and organizational entrepreneurship have a
significant relationship through which an organization becomes more innovative and successful.
Specifically, it is necessary to understand what kind of information behaviours employees display,
under what conditions, what value and roles such behaviours play in building a more innovative
organization, and what strategies organizations should implement to enhance employees’
motivation and capitalize on their information behaviours. It appears that successful organizations
know how to motivate employees.
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